“Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.” -Jack Handey

Things such as the water crisis in California is what keeps me up at night. But, I feel when I talk about this with other people I get shoulder shrugs and comments like, “well I am sure they will figure it out.” But will they?

I read an article on CNN about the scientist from NASA who claims the state of California will be out of water in one year. One year!? The article goes on to state that CA is encouraging shorter showers and less toilet flushing. Great, but these just do not seem like adequate solutions to this everlasting drought situation, might as well add in “do a rain dance every night before bed.”

This immediately brings me to think about factory farming and on the large scale our country is producing meat. I read it takes almost 2,000 gallons of water to make 1 pound of beef where the average shower uses 14 gallons. So, that is A LOT of water being used for each person to enjoy one hamburger. Yet, I do not see any solutions being “cut down on meat consumption.”

This is just another way again that adopting a plant based diet, even part time can make a dramatic impact on helping our planet. We shouldn’t have let CA get this far but I feel the time to make some dramatic changes to help our plant needs to start now.